


Christmas Wish

by rellkelltn87



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Barson Secret Santa Exchange 2020, Christmas, Christmas Stockings, Letters to Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28304769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rellkelltn87/pseuds/rellkelltn87
Summary: Noah asks Santa to bring him a baby brother.
Relationships: Rafael Barba/Olivia Benson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49
Collections: Barson Secret Santa 2020





	Christmas Wish

**Author's Note:**

> For the 2020 Barson Christmas fic exchange, for María (Mariex_09). 
> 
> From prompt: Barson with Noah and a baby boy.

Dear Santa,

Last year, I asked you for a baby brother. I gave the letter to my mom to put in the mailbox. I got everything I asked for except a baby brother. 

So, I think you don’t exist. But I’ll give you one more chance - I gave my mom one letter, but I’m bringing this letter, the real one, to the mailbox myself.

I’ve been good this year. Even my mom says so. And I got my birthday wish — Uncle Rafa came back to New York. So maybe if birthday wishes are real, you’re real too. But I don’t know. So I’m sending you this letter to tell you I want one thing for Christmas, just one — a baby brother. 

Sincerely,  
Noah Porter Benson

—

Olivia Benson was startled awake just before sunrise on Christmas Day. She wasn’t sure why; maybe she’d had a nightmare she couldn’t remember, or maybe because Barba was spending the night, something neither of them had really expected, even though they’d been together a few times since he’d returned from Iowa.

She’d invited him to spend Christmas Day with her and Noah. He’d texted her after midnight mass. _Why don’t you just come over now?_ she’d suggested, and he agreed.

A moment after she returned her head to the pillow, she figured out what had startled her awake: the sharp wail of an infant, coming from inside her apartment.

Barba was also awake. “Stay here,” Benson warned, but Barba didn’t heed her warning, trailing close behind as she tiptoed into the living room. 

She stopped in her tracks when she noticed movement inside Noah’s stocking, which was hung next to hers on the kitchen counter. The movements were specific — recognizable — and she hurried over to the stocking, inside which she found a living, breathing, kicking infant.

Barba’s eyes bugged out of his head. “Is someone — in here?” he wondered out loud. 

“Well, him,” Benson said, her eyes turning to the baby in her arms, then to the locked deadbolt. “I’ll check on Noah. Get a blanket and call 911. I’ll give them my badge number when they get on.”

Barba grabbed a throw blanket off the couch and Benson handed him the infant, who couldn’t have been more than a week old. He froze, standing stiff in the middle of Benson’s living room while Benson went to check on Noah and the rest of the apartment. 

“You didn’t call?” Benson asked.

“Can’t — move,” Barba said.

She couldn’t help smiling, in spite of the bizarre situation. 

A few seconds after Benson called 911, Noah sauntered out of his room. “C’mon, Noah,” Benson said, “put on your coat. And socks. You need socks. My friends are going to check our apartment for an hour or two, and then —”

“Santa brought me a baby brother!”

“No, sweet boy, I think someone in the building might have left him here. Or —” She stopped herself, taking the baby from Barba, who was by now radiating a cold sweat. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

Noah let Barba help him with his coat and shoes. “I’m telling you,” Noah said, “this is my baby brother.”

“Noah, you know that’s not how —” Benson started to say. 

“You told me you found me in a house when I was a little baby and you knew right away I was your son.”

“Noah.”

“Where’d you find him?”

“C’mon,” Benson said, tilting her head to usher everyone out the door.

“Where’d you find him?” Noah asked again. 

“Right now, we need to have him checked out by a doctor.”

“Where?”

“At the hospital.”

“At the hospital?” the boy asked, worry crossing his face. “Why?”

“Because we don’t know where he’s been.”

“Is that what happened when you found me?” 

“Yes,” Benson told her son. In the elevator, on the way down to the lobby, she muttered, half under her breath, “We found him in your stocking.”

“What?”

“We found him in your stocking,” she said, a little louder. 

“See! I told you! I asked Santa for a baby brother, and he gave me one!”

—-

“Melinda,” Benson said, standing to greet the medical examiner who Barba had just let in to the apartment. “What’s this that couldn’t wait?”

Barba took Warner’s coat and hung it on a hook in the entryway. 

“We got a hit on Gabriel’s DNA,” Warner said.

“On a Saturday?”

“Our lab techs work strange hours sometimes.”

“And, I know I’ve asked you this question before, but, you couldn’t have told me about this over the phone?” 

Benson had been fostering the baby, who she’d named Gabriel — for now, while they waited for news on who his parents were, or where he’d come from, or how he’d wound up in Noah’s stocking on Christmas morning — and Barba stayed over four or five nights a week to help. NYPD had found no evidence that anyone other than the Bensons and Barba had been in the apartment on December 24th and 25th. 

In fact, they’d spent a few hours questioning Barba before ruling out his involvement. 

And Noah kept insisting that the boy was his baby brother, brought by Santa Claus. 

The late nights were starting to wear on Benson. Sometimes she wondered if maybe Noah was right, if maybe Santa had indeed left an infant in his stocking. 

She was tired. Even with Barba’s help, she was exhausted. 

“Liv, I am very confused,” Warner said, sitting beside her on the couch, folding her hands in front of her, unconsciously tapping one foot on the rug. “Rafael, you’ll want to hear this too.”

Barba joined them in the living room. 

“According to the DNA results, Rafael or one of his brothers is the baby’s father.”

Benson shot Barba a sudden look, a hundred thousand daggers, from the couch. 

“I’ve been nothing but honest with you,” he promised Benson, and the anger on her face immediately faded. “And I — may — from rumors I’ve heard about my father — have at least two or three half-brothers, so —”

“There’s more,” Warner said.

“I’m sorry,” Benson told Barba. “I’m sorry, I’m tired, I’m very tired. I shouldn’t have assumed —”

“Just listen,” Warner interrupted. “Olivia is Gabriel’s biological mother.”

Benson and Barba took a few seconds to process Warner’s news, then both let out a baffled “ _what_?”

“I’ve never been pregnant,” Benson said.

Warner leaned forward. “This is a bizarre question, but are you sure?”

“Am I sure? I think I would have remembered if I’d been pregnant for nine months and given birth. And someone, somewhere would have noticed. And —”

“You’d know, you’d absolutely know, if you’d given birth a month ago, of course,” Warner said. “But somehow, you are definitely this baby’s biological mother and Barba is most likely his biological father.”

Benson tried to ask a question about accuracy and other explanations, but all that came out was another “ _what_?”

—

“Noah Porter Benson Barba!”

Noah stopped mid-sentence and, clearing his throat, lifted his legs off the coffee table and sat up straight on the couch. The 15-year-old, though fiercely independent, knew he was in deep trouble when his recently-retired police captain mother used all four of his names. 

“What’s he telling you this time?” Benson asked Gabriel, who was staring intently at the not-to-be-opened-until-tomorrow-morning presents beneath the family’s Christmas tree. “Is it the one about how space aliens left you on the roof?”

“There’s no such thing as space aliens,” the 7-year-old said.

“Or the one about us finding you under the bridge and having to answer the troll’s riddle to be allowed to take you home?”

From the couch, Noah suppressed a laugh. Benson shot him a death glare.

“No,” Gabriel said, “Noah said when he was my age, before you and Papa knew you were in love, he wrote Santa a letter saying he wanted a baby brother and —”

Now Gabriel was interrupted by a key in the door, his bescarfed and red-eared father in the entryway, hands occupied by two large shopping bags. 

“You know the real story,” Benson reminded her younger son. “Noah came into my life when he was three months old and my heart knew right away that he was my son, and you grew in my belly when I never thought I’d grow a baby in my belly. I am so very lucky to have both of you, even the teenager who keeps making up ridiculous stories.”

Noah rolled his eyes. 

“You bought more stuff?” Benson asked, turning to Barba. 

Barba shrugged and dropped the bags near the kitchen counter. He gently cupped Benson’s face and kissed her. “Your lips are ice cold,” she commented.

“Hey,” Barba said, “we should all be grateful we can be out and about with ice-cold lips this year.” He walked over to his sons, planting a kiss atop each of their heads.


End file.
